Ever since the sixties playgrounds have echoed to the sound of children copying the grating voice of the daleks from BBC TV's Doctor Who. Now, thanks to some free software and a little patience, you can issue your own commands from the comfort of your home. Why not turn them into personalised ringtones or voicemail messages?
The daleks have always been hot property. Even before the renaissance of their parent series on TV recently many people were fascinated by them. This tutorial will enable you to record your voice and make it sound similar to the iconic aliens. However, we should point out that the intellectual property rights in copyright, trademark and anything else dalekky belong to the BBC and the estate of Terry Nation. If you decide to record some novelty phrases using this method, it's best to do so in the privacy of your own home and not as a public performance. We've recorded some sample sounds to accompany this tutorial, but these steer clear of any trademark phrases as no violation of rights is intended. It's just a bit of fun.
Audacity
We'll be using the open source sound editor Audacity to create this effect. It's freely available for download at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/. Download and install the latest stable version for Windows. This enables you to record and edit sound recordings and you can also process the recordings with various plugins.
The dalek voice on the TV series is performed by actor Nicholas Briggs, who has had many years of practice creating the perfect voice. It's a combination of his own vocal performance and a piece of equipment called a ring modulator. Details of the precise settings are probably a closely guarded secret, but with a little trial and error and the willingness to make a fool of yourself, it's possible to come up with something that sounds pretty close to the real thing.
When preparing your own performance bear in mind that daleks tend to talk in a sing song manner, using staccato syllables in a rather nasal monotone. The pitch varies from dalek to dalek and it's the grating quality that the ring modulator brings to the mix. You can get a similar effect without digital processing by performing an opera singer like vibrato as you speak. You need a goodly amount of phlegm in the throat and a willingness to send yourself hoarse to pull it off though. It's better to use a ring modulator filter in Audacity.
To do this you'll need to install both the filter and a converter to make sure that it works in Audacity. This involves downloading some files and extracting them to the correct folder on your PC. The following annotation demonstrates how:
Audacity Plugins
For Audacity to support a ring modulator, you need to add some plugins.
Click on the image to see it full size
1. Plug-Ins folder
Make sure that the plug in files that you need to use are unzipped and copied to C:\Program Files\Audacity\Plug-Ins.
2. KillerRinger Ring Modulator
You can download the ring modulator from here. This was written by Toby Newman. It's a zip file, which you'll need to extract and then copy killerringer.dll to the plug ins folder.
3. VST Bridge
Killer Ringer is a VST plugin, designed to be used with Cubase, a commercial program. However, you can get it to work in Audacity by installing the vst-bridge.dll in the plug-ins folder. You can get it from here. Download the zip file, extract it and move the DLL into the folder as above.
Performance
Now you've got the plugins in place, you're ready to record your voice. Connect a microphone to your computer and launch Audacity. Do a few test runs to make sure that the position of the mic is OK and that your voice is being picked up properly.
The following walkthrough demonstrates how to record and process your voice to get the distinctive sound that we're after. We use a couple of different filters after the ring modulator one to help lift the sound and make it as alien as possible. Feel free to alter the settings and experiment a bit, but bear in mind that you really don't need much processing. If you're too heavy handed with it, you voice may become completely garbled and impossible to understand.
That alien sound
Are you ready to take over the universe? Limber up your voice now.
1
Record yourself
Launch Audacity and connect your microphone. Ensure that microphone is selected as the source and click the record button. Speak the phrase that you'd like to say, remembering to use a clipped, sing-song kind of voice.
Press Play to hear an example.
2
Add Ring Modulation
Stop recording and select the portion of voice that you want to process. Choose Effect > Killerringer. Set the sliders to very low levels. Try Root pitch 0.003, Speed 0.01 and Amount 0.01. Click preview and alter these if necessary. Click OK to apply the change.
Press Play to hear an example.
3
Normalise the sound
The ring modulator removes portions of the sound, so it becomes quieter. You'll need to boost it a little, so with the sound highlighted, choose Effect > Normalise. Keep both boxes ticked and click OK.
Press Play to hear an example.
4
Add Delay
You should have a pretty convincing sound by now, but if you want to make it sound more like it's coming from a PA system, you can always add some delay. Highlight the sound and choose Effect > Delay. Don't apply too much; we found decay amount 5, delay time 0.04 and number of echoes 1 worked well.
Press Play to hear an example.
To save your finished recording, choose File > Export as WAV and provide a filename. This leaves your alien voice as a .WAV file which you can playback or even set as a ringtone or SMS alert on your phone.
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